Tales From Ithilian
by moribundbunny
Summary: Perhaps what is aptly described as an chronicle of the shenanigans that Frodo, Samwise, and Smeagol involve themselves in whilst traveling through the harsh wilderness of Eastern Gondor.
1. Chapter 1

**Smeagol Eats all the Fucking Waybread**

Samwise Gamgee awoke to the sound of a fellbeast shrieking in the distance. He stretched, reaching his pudgy arms as high as he could, barely touching the low ceiling of their rocky shelter. He exhaled and sat up, feeling a familiar ache in his stomach which was accompanied by a deep menacing growl. The curly haired Hobbit smiled to himself, knowing that his stomach was louder than even the great Fatty Bolger's.

It resounded once more and his grin was replaced by a sorrowful grimace of pain. It was a grim reminder that, being a Hobbit of the Shire, Sam needed almost constant sustenance to exist in this world. So with a heavy heart, and a light stomach, he dropped to all fours like a dog and pulled his considerable body mass to his travel pack to break his fast.

It wasn't that he hated _lembas_ , the bread given to them by the kind elves of Lothlorien, but he had been subsisting on the nearly tasteless pastry for several weeks now. At this point it was beginning to remind him of the slog which the pigs back home wouldn't be bothered with, and that was saying far more than Sam, or the pigs, would be comfortable admitting.

It was supposed to have a light and airy taste with notes of honey or some shit like that, but the novelty associated with the wafers had long since been lost on Sam.

 _Delicate cuisine my ass,_ He thought as he opened up the pack.

The stuff was filling though. That's one thing those pointy eared fuckers hadn't lied about. In Sam's experience, two bites was roughly equivalent to the entire King's Party Platter at the Green Dragon. At least that was his best estimate. He'd never really eaten one. He'd only ever eaten about three or four at a time and his backwards interpolation skills weren't exactly the talk of the town.

But still, the important thing was that these crusty bricks of shit were going to get this old gardener where he needed to go.

At least they would have, granted they were in his travel pack. Because they weren't. They just weren't fucking there.

Sam rubbed his eyes, to make sure he wasn't seeing things, or rather not seeing things. To no avail it turned out, as the elven bread failed to appear following this treatment.

At first he was simply confused, the numbers weren't adding up in his head. This meant nothing as they typically didn't anyway but something was clearly amiss here and Sam could see that quite plainly.

Usually if something happened which Sam couldn't explain, he would just blame it on Smeagol and be done with it. It didn't have to make sense and it usually didn't, but at the end of the day Sam could feel contented at the fact that justice had been done. So deciding that there was nothing wrong with sticking to the classics, Sam crawled over to where Frodo's half-naked skitzo bitch was snoozing.

"Smeagol!" Samwise half shouted at the snoring sack of flesh in the corner. "Smeagol, get up you filthy bag of shit!"

It was no use, Smeagol was sound asleep and it appeared he would remain so for the foreseeable future. Gritting his teeth, he huffed and muttered under his breath,

"Gollum."

Immediately, the decrepit wisp of a creature opened his eyes and regarded Sam with abject disgust.

"The fat one calls for us. What does it want this time, Precious?" said Smeagol as he untangled his bony appendages.

Gollum, as he preferred to be called nowadays, was not on the best of terms with Sam, but they were at least both aware of how greatly they detested each other. As far as he was concerned, it was easier to sleep near someone who you know would like to kill you, than to surround yourself with people whose motives were unclear.

Sam was not one to mince words and so he very clearly laid out the problem in no uncertain terms.

"You son of a bitch, you ate all the fucking waybread." Smeagol looked taken aback by this claim.

"Precious ate all the filthy elven bread? But we hates it." He said as though speaking to a small child.

"I know you did something with it. It's all gone see?" Sam said, holding his pack forward as a visual aid. Smeagol grabbed the pack looked inside and grunted thoughtfully; almost surprised that Sam's claim had any weight behind it.

"Well, Precious didn't eats it. We swears!" Sam was having none of it.

"You're a fucking liar! And a bad one too, you know that?" He said loudly, no longer caring about waking his companion.

"Maybe the fat one eats it, hmm? Maybe he eats it and blames us for it." Said Smeagol wryly.

"Oh, you bastard. You think you're awful clever don't you?" shouted Sam, his fiery accent becoming more intense. "You're trying to pin this on me thinking it'll win you some points with your _master_."Smeagol glared at him.

"Don't… don't you get fucking started with us." Smeagol began.

"Oh, I know all about your little scheme to get close with Frodo. I've seen you kissing his arse all day." Asserted Sam. "What do you think will come of it? You think he's actually going to let you go when we're finished with this?"

"You little fucking shit! We don't even eats it! We think it tastes like ass!" Shouted Smeagol.

At this point, Frodo was very wide awake and listening intently to the conversation. However when it seemed that the exchange may come to blows, Frodo decided it was time to put it to an end.

"Now, now, There's no need to be impolite." He said serenely, a glassy smile plastered to his face." At the sound of his voice, both Smeagol and Sam stopped talking and looked over at him. It wasn't that he looked tired, because he was, and that was understandable. But Frodo had a special sort of unfeeling miasma wafting from him that suggested he wasn't even partly in control of his thoughts or actions.

"Yeah, okay mister Frodo, but all the lembas is gone and I don't know where-"

"Don't even worry about it, Gamgee." Frodo said, cutting him off. "We'll figure it out. Now, both of you go back to sleep. That's what I'll be doing." And with a giggle that wasn't as much a giggle as it was a startled gurgling yelp not unlike the sound a cow would make, Frodo eased himself back into the fetal position and settled in for another half hour of uninterrupted, wide-eyed sleep.

The other two glanced at each other, deciding that previous topic of discussion wasn't worth the trouble anymore. Having come to this mutual understanding, the only thing left to do was wordlessly go back to sleep in their respective corners. And so they did.

It was best that some things be left unsaid, for the knife's edge upon which their quest rested seemed to grow keener every day. It wasn't the first dispute they'd had, and it certainly wouldn't be the last, but their next quarrel would have to wait for another day.

As for Frodo, he lay alone and cold with nothing but his elven cloak for warmth. Yet as he lay, a smile crept onto his face. For a fat wad of pipe weed resided in his pocket, and all the fucking waybread sat in his stomach.


	2. Chapter 2

**Frodo Begins Having Seizures**

It hadn't been a week since the gang had completely run out of food when Frodo began having his convulsions. After the first attack, Sam jumped on the opportunity to reflect on the past few days and realized that he probably should have seen this coming.

It wasn't out of a lack of sympathy for Frodo that Sam had neglected his need for sustenance. Rather, it was a completely self aware ignorance to the concept that he bore any responsibility whatsoever for the well being of his closest friend.

After the disappearance of the waybread, Sam had come to notice that every hour and a half or so Frodo would stop to vomit roughly a tankard's worth of half digested stomach fodder and smoke some old Toby. After a day or so, Sam began to realize precisely what had happened to the missing waybread.

"That fucker downed all our fucking elf bread." Sam mused to Smeagol as Frodo wretched his guts out in the bushes.

He grinned to himself at the sight. A lesser hobbit might have come to the same conclusion after weeks of careful investigation and several witness accounts, but this Gamgee was a step ahead of the pack. He certainly wouldn't have been surprised if Smeagol was also aware of their master's betrayal, he gave the strung out sack of shit at least that much credit, but nonetheless he expected nothing short of awestruck admiration resulting from his proclamation.

"No fucking shit, fatty." Said Smeagol, promptly returning to braining his catch.

On second thought, it may have been a bit more obvious than Sam had initially reckoned. He decided that since this was something that had the potential to gravely damage his self worth, it was best to just completely forget about it.

Besides, what was important in this moment was what was to be done about the situation. Smeagol would be fine without the food. He didn't bother eating it anyway, instead opting to hunt for food himself. Sam thought himself to be fine as well, as he looked upon his rotund figure. It would be unpleasant, but the food he had stored away would keep him going for a short while anyway. Beyond that, Sam decided that there really wasn't much else of great concern that needed be considered.

That was until Frodo started having seizures.

It was on a clear Friday morning, although Sam had taken to calling everyday Friday since he had lost count, and the troupe had been making good progress. Sam had been wrong about his assumptions that not eating would be an unpleasant experience. It was hands down the most fucking pain he'd ever had to endure since that one dream he'd had about his arms and legs being slowly gnawed off by Rosie fucking Cotton. He still woke up in a cold sweat over that shit.

In any event, he had just been thinking about how he might rectify the situation, when Frodo suddenly stopped and turned to face him. Come to think of it, Frodo hadn't vomited in over six hours and he was looking whiter than a Baggins had any right to look.

In a half whisper, Frodo looked at Sam and uttered, "Sam... Oh my fucking god. My stomach feels like it's not even fucking there." Sam just looked on in stoic disbelief. "Are you sure all the waybread is-" That was all he managed to get out because he immediately hit the ground and started shaking like a fish in a shallow stream.

He was making sounds that a entire flock of geese would undoubtedly be proud to have orchestrated. His flailing arms would likely have ended the life of anything in a five foot radius. It went on for hours it seemed, although it was probably only about ninety seconds before Sam spoke up.

"Fuck." He slowly enunciated.

"Master seems to be broken, Precious." Added Smeagol. The remainder of the incident played out in relative silence as Frodo carried on with his shenanigans.

Frodo wasn't fat, Sam realized. He probably didn't have much left on him that was worth much of anything in terms of lateral G's. It was in this moment that Sam finally accepted the fact that Frodo had not the knowhow, the means, nor the remote desire to even begin to take care of himself. He was kinda fucked. It was Sam's fault.

It continued happening. It seemed that everyday Frodo would stop to settle his inner demons and then, without a word from anyone, they would be continuing on again. Frodo seemed to have no memory of any of these incidents but to be fair, Sam had never asked him about it.

Deciding that after a few days of complete loss of motor control it was time to have an open discussion of the matter, Sam approached Frodo as he washed his face in a stream.

"Mister Frodo, could I have a word?" Only Frodo's neck moved as he turned his gaze to meet Sam's.

"Of course, Sam. What do you want to talk about?" Sam thought he saw a friendly smile just barely lighten Frodo's face, but in fact he did not. Frodo's face remained motionless. Undeterred, Sam pressed on to the important matters at hand.

"I think, uh... Smeagol's thinking about catching some fish later. I picked some roots earlier and well... we're gonna eat them if you wanna join us." Sam gulped as he remembered that food was not a particularly stimulating topic of conversation to have with Frodo.

He began to go on about how he'd forgotten the taste of strawberries and some other stuff that Sam didn't really give two shits about. He was just beginning to talk about how he was naked in the dark or something when Sam cut him off.

"Frodo, as your dear friend, you know I just wanna 'elp," He began. Frodo stopped talking and simply closed his eyes.

"Yes, Sam. Of course." Encouraged, Sam continued.

"I would really like to know where you're at right now. How are you feeling, mister Frodo?"

Frodo looked from Sam back to the stream and softly chuckled to himself. The way he used to when he told the Shire children the stories of his uncle Bilbo and the wizard Gandalf. When he used to close the door, sending off his final guests after an uproarious party. When he used to watch Sam through the window as he toiled over his precious fucking potatoes. Then he let out a sigh.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Sam. Have you seen me writhing on the ground every fucking day for no readily apparent reason?" Sam wasn't sure whether to acknowledge Frodo at this point or to feign ignorance of the whole thing. "Don't answer that." Said Frodo as he got up to leave. "Let me know when your shitty stew is finished."

Sam cried that night.

It was now nearly a month since the waybread incident, and Frodo's attacks had all but stopped. He was feeling better than he had in a while and they were making good time as of late. By Sam's count it was Friday today, and to Frodo it felt every bit of a good Friday.

He observed the horizon. Truth be told he had no idea where he was going but he liked to pretend he did. His charge Smeagol insisted they were going the right way and that was enough for Frodo. He lifted his pipe to his mouth and took in a massive toke of what he believed to be pretty decent Toby.

He grumbled under his breath, "Oh, that's good shit." And then gestured forward as if it meant anything. "Carry on then! Don't get left behind!"

Sam was happy for Frodo. He really fucking was. But something was up about him lately that didn't make any sense. He was far too chipper for someone in his position and it was becoming a bit disturbing. It didn't help that seemingly whenever Frodo spoke, that bitch Gollum would mutter under his breath something to the effect of

"Yes, precious. Very good, oh yes."

Sam was sure he was on to something of the same magnitude of the lembas incident and he looked forward to feeling smug when he figured out what was going on. With that in mind he dragged his considerable weight through the brush in pursuit of his good friend Frodo.

Close behind, Gollum cackled evilly to himself as he once again thought about how beautifully his doping operation had been going. Frodo's weed hadn't been weed for the past two weeks. It was nigh on acutely toxic in fact but it kept that Baggins bastard going.

As far as Gollum was concerned, it really didn't matter all that much how they got to Mount Doom, just so long as they got there in a timely manner. If that involved drugging his companions to within an inch of their lives, then that's precisely what this miserable sack of shit was going to do.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Gang Gets Lost in a Cave**

To be fair, Sam deserved a lot of credit for what he had managed to do since the trio had run out of waybread.

He had adapted.

Every morning he would check his snares, gather various edible plants from the surroundings, and make breakfast before Frodo even woke. He was getting so good at living off the land that he was actually amassing a surplus of food which he kept in his pack. He was very proud of himself.

However, on an equally valid note, he somehow failed to notice the signs that Frodo's well being was depreciating somewhat rapidly.

For instance, the reason Sam was able to get so much done before Frodo woke up was because Frodo didn't really ever wake up. It took a nontrivial amount of effort for Sam to shake his wide eyed companion out of his comatose state every day. When Frodo eventually did regain consciousness he would almost invariably begin screeching in horror as though he and his entire family were being slow roasted over hot embers in a dimly lit cave for the purposes of being fed to a pack of hungry wargs. At which point Sam would simply chuckle and serve him up a bowl of piping hot stew.

After Frodo was finished screaming he wouldn't eat. Though Sam tried to press food on him every day, Frodo would chuck the bowl behind him without even looking at it.

This troubled Sam. Not because Frodo wasn't eating anything but because it offended him deeply that his down home, backwoods, hand picked, jury rigged, honest and humble Gamgee stew wasn't being appreciated as it should.

The only thing Frodo seemed to ingest was the smoke from his pipe which he couldn't seem to go five minutes without. Every puff was desperate. It was a constant cycle of panic and relief. It didn't seem to bother anyone that every once in a while his pipe would go missing and then Gollum would find it lying around somewhere.

All that considered, Sam may have been excused not knowing that something was seriously wrong with his friend. It would be almost acceptable to blame the strange behavior on the influence of the ring he carried.

The status quo changed somewhat one Friday morning when Sam awoke to Frodo looming over him, eyes wide and mouth agape.

"Mister Frodo!" Exclaimed Sam. "I must 'ave overslept. Just give me half a moment and I'll-"

"Gamgee, you fuck." Said Frodo flatly. All the color rushed from Sam's face.

"Frodo, you- you know I- I don't mean to-" Frodo knelt beside him and clamped his hands around Sam's neck.

In a hoarse whisper he uttered, "Where's my fucking pipe, you useless sack of blubber?" Sam had no answer. They stayed that way for a while, Sam lying there in horror, Frodo slowing squeezing the air out of him. Slowly, Sam began to put the pieces together.

Firstly, Frodo's pipe was missing. There was no doubt about that one. It was also evident to Sam that perhaps Frodo believed he knew where the pipe currently was. Lastly it seemed that his good friend was willing to resort to mildly aggressive actions to ascertain whether or not he knew where the pipe was. In which case it would only be prudent to inform Frodo that he had no idea where the pipe was and avoid any unnecessary hardship. So in a very formal tone, Sam explained,

"Fuck! Fuck, mister Frodo! I don't have any idea where your fucking pipe is! Please just let go of my neck! I don't want this!"

Frodo was not a sadist, and as such he took no pleasure in seeing Sam suffer like this. However he was a strung out shell of a hobbit looking for a fix and scarcely recognized Sam as a sentient being. So nor was it painful to continue torturing Sam, until death if necessary, to reacquire his weed.

"Sam, listen to me very closely." Frodo said coldly, "I don't give fuck about saving Middle-Earth. I don't give a fuck about destroying that bitch Sauron. I just wanna get fucking stoned. So if you don't tell me where my pipe is I will tear off your fucking arms and legs and then cauterize the wounds with fire so you don't get to die. Then I will put on this ring."

Frodo displayed the golden band strung about his neck as a visual aid.

"I will put on this ring, carry you on my back all the way back to the shire, and then we'll take a visit to miss Cotton's house."

Sam's eyes widened.

"I will deposit you on her counter and then beat her to fucking death with your right leg. I will murder Rosie Cotton with one of your own rotting piece of shit legs that I saved while you fucking watch."

Tears streamed down Sam's ashen face as he silently wept. "Please. Please just kill me right now mister Frodo." Whimpered Sam. He brought his shaking hands up to Frodo's and weakly clutched them. "Do it. Just do it now." He squeaked, pulling Frodo's hands together as if to aid in his own demise.

"No." Frodo said, releasing Sam's neck. "You'dve fucking talked by now if you knew where it was."

Sam curled into a ball as his frame was racked with silent sobs.

"Must be that skank Gollum. Trying to sneak a toke while I'm asleep, that fuck." Declared Frodo as he marched off.

As Sam lay there, cold and alone, muttering "Fuck" in between sobs, he finally came to the realization that something might be wrong with Frodo. He fell back asleep without having breakfast.

When Sam awoke again he wasn't necessarily surprised when he wasn't still at their campsite. Shit like this was bound to happen when Frodo was on the fritz. It also wasn't terribly surprising that Frodo was busy sharpening Sting in front of him as though preparing for some impending battle. It was the zeal with which Frodo scraped at the edge of his blade that frightened Sam.

He was going to kill someone with that blade and he was going to do it soon.

Sam sat up and observed his companion.

"Frodo, aren't those elven blades supposed to keep their sharpness no matter what?"

"Fuck you, Sam. What the fuck do you know?" Frodo replied immediately, keeping his pace.

Sam considered responding for only a moment before quickly dispelling the feeling of indignation in his heart. Instead he decided that it was time to do some deduction.

Frodo wasn't smoking and he still seemed quite hostile. So it seemed reasonable to conclude that he hadn't found his pipe yet. This either meant that he hadn't found Gollum yet or that Gollum didn't know where the pipe was either. This was the tough part. Either possibility seemed equally likely to Sam. He figured he had a fifty-fifty shot at getting it right so he decided to hedge his inquiry.

"So... I guess Gollum didn't know where your pipe was? Or..." Sam grinned on the inside. Fucking brilliant. He was just one of the guys now. Frodo stopped honing Sting and looked straight at Sam.

"No, you fucking shithead. He knows where my pipe is. He's fucking in there right now!" Frodo enunciated every word carefully and gestured behind Sam. Sam felt patronized but he was sure it was all in good fun. He was smart so he didn't let it get to him. After repeating that mantra in his head several times he turned to look behind him at what Frodo had been pointing at.

Sam had been adventuring for a while now and in his travels he had come across many a cave. This was one of the fucking terrifying ones. There was most definitely a coven of barrow wights holding a fucking seance in there. If Gollum was actually in there he was a sacrifice. His guts were splayed across an obsidian table, his heart still pumping away as the attendees slowly cut away chunks of his intestines and threw them in a giant cauldron whilst muttering black speech or some shit.

"Gollum's not in there" Said Sam confidently.

"Fuck you, Sam. Of course he is." Replied Frodo, returning to his blade.

"What makes you so sure mister Frodo?" Asked Sam, stalling. He was sure Frodo had thought this through and was just as scared of the cave as he was. That's why he was sharpening his blade, so he could skewer the ritualistic fuckheads down there. Misguided as he may be, Frodo was just looking out for everyone's best interests.

"I can feel it Sam. Gollum loves caves. So I went and found the caviest looking cave around and here it is. Look at it, it's fucking perfect. The skank eats this shit up."

Suddenly Frodo was hit with a disturbingly debilitating coughing fit. He dropped his dagger and whetstone and fell over as he hacked and wheezed. After thirty seconds or so, Frodo stopped coughing and sat back up. Wiping blood from his mouth he looked back at the cave.

"He's definitely in there Sam." Sam sighed as he resigned to the fact that their descent into this cave was unavoidable. Glancing behind him, he tried to think happy thoughts.

Perhaps this cave was totally abandoned. No seances, no barrow wights. Maybe Gollum was actually down there, alive with Frodo's weed. He would say something like.

"Precious won't believe the day we've had."

And then present the pipe as though he had found it down there for some reason. And then Frodo would get seriously fucking high and unable to do anything but follow orders. Then he would be the boss again. Samwise smiled at the thought.

When he turned back to say, "Okay, Frodo. Let's go for it." Frodo was finishing up what was one of seven incisions he'd made in his left arm. Ostensibly it was to test the sharpness of Sting and Sam felt no desire to pursue any deeper reason beyond that. But now Frodo was bleeding profusely. It wasn't to the point in which immediate attention was required, but it was to the point in which Sam definitely should have said something. He didn't feel like it.

It was clear from the start of their cave expedition that Gollum wasn't fucking there. Nobody was. Frodo started off by blindly running down arbitrary passages while shouting things like

"Gollum you bastard! I'm gonna fuck you up!"

Sam kept up as best as he could but his significant mass was slowing him down. Frodo would always wait for him though.

"Keep up, fatty." He would say. "I didn't drag you for two hours just to leave you behind."Sam was almost touched.

After a short while though, Frodo began showing signs of fatigue, most likely brought on by severe blood loss, and suggested a different tactic.

"If we... fucking.., just stick to one side of the cave... like the... left side." Explained Frodo, the phial of Galadrial illuminating his sickly complexion as his breathing became more labored. "We'll... eventually find... the way out."

"But what about Gollum?" Asked Sam. "Aren't we looking for him?" Frodo nodded affirmatively.

"That's what I said. We'll eventually find... Gollum." Sam left it at that. They were fucking lost.

Frodo had collapsed roughly five minutes after the implementation of their new exploration regime. Sam dutifully sat his companion up, bandaged his wounds, and built a fire out of some conveniently placed twigs he found nearby. All was right with the world. Sam was back in control. He would treat Frodo's wounds and prepare breakfast while Frodo slept off his power trip.

Sam opened his pack and pulled out some of the dried meat and vegetables he'd been keeping in reserve and began preparing a stew. When Frodo woke up he would have a bowl ready for him and Frodo would initially turn it away, but his growling stomach would convince him to give in. He would try to eat it by himself but his wounds would render him without the strength to even lift his spoon. Sam would then of course carefully spoon feed him until he had eaten every bite. Then Frodo would look at him with appreciative eyes, say

"Thank you, Sam."

and then fall back asleep. Later perhaps, Sam would go exploring and find the exit himself. He would find a branch and carve a rudimentary pipe for Frodo to use in the meantime until they found his old one. He would come back to Frodo just in time for him to wake up. Then he would carry Frodo out of the cave while he puffed on his new pipe. Frodo would be so grateful and Sam would be his best friend. Sam wiped the tears from his eyes as he started putting the ingredients into his pot.

"You're welcome, mister Frodo." He said to himself.

At this moment in time Sam was certain of four things. They were lost in a cave in the middle of nowhere and it was likely nobody would ever find them. And that was okay.

Frodo was seriously physically and mentally damaged and possibly would never recover. And that was okay.

That motherfucking bitch Gollum had been putting some sort of fucking toxin in Frodo's pipe weed since the aftermath of the lembas incident and that's what was causing Frodo to lose his fucking mind. And that was okay.

Lastly, Frodo had been away from his poisoned weed for several hours now and it was likely he wouldn't be getting a fix for a good deal of time. He was about to go through a pretty fucked up withdrawal which would probably kill him. In any event he would be completely and utterly helpless for the next few days with only Sam's tender love and care to depend on. And that was okay too.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sam Has an Existential Crisis**

Sam was almost content. For a short while at least he was really quite keen on the concept of slowly dying in the small cave with his beloved Frodo. It didn't take long for him to realize that this would entail watching Frodo slowly rot away in front of him while he helplessly munched on the last of the mutton. After Frodo was dead he would starve as well.

It would take significantly longer, Sam thought to himself, to starve to death than it would Frodo. That had been amicably demonstrated a few weeks prior. But in the end Sam would still perish. It was all a question of suffering at this point.

Sam sat against the cold cave wall and rested his chin in his hands as he pondered this concept, this suffering. Frodo would not last as long as Sam but his degree of suffering would be perhaps much greater than his own due to his injury and the fact that Frodo was probably already losing muscle as he was completely devoid of any fat stores. Sam's reasoning wasn't anywhere near this complex, but he arrived at roughly the same conclusion.

Sam, on the other hand, was quite rotund and would most certainly outlast his fragile companion. He also figured that he would experience somewhat less pain during his expiration. In fact he preferred to believe that he would probably die long before he ran out of organic mass.

In his mind he saw his body as a vessel that not only needed energy to keep functioning but also needed to keep eating. It was the divine purpose for the Hobbit's entire being to constantly consume food. He was dead sure of that after the waybread fast.

Considering all these factors, Sam couldn't decide who would suffer the most over the course of their deaths. Frodo in intense pain for a short duration of time, or Sam in marginally less pain for a significantly larger amount of time. Did it balance? Did he and Frodo's suffering equate? Does every creature big and small share an equivalent suffering in death?

Sam couldn't grasp it with his pudgy gardener hands. It was fucking profound what he'd stumbled upon. He decided it was best to sleep on it. There wasn't a problem he'd yet encountered he couldn't solve by sleeping on it.

His slumber yielded him nothing but pain.

He had that fucking dream again. That dream about Rosie Cotton.

They were in Rivendell in the council room. The whole fellowship was there, the elves were there, the dwarves were there, Elrond was there, but most importantly Rosie Cotton was there as well.

Sam was constrained to the table by some powerful unseen magical shit which was undoubtedly brought upon by the putrid black speech leeching out of Gandalf's maw. Rosie regarded him as a lover as she circled the table.

 _Of course she would._ Sam reminded himself. Yes, that made sense. Of course she would.

That being settled Sam was content with the equilibrium of his current circumstances. Even as the dwarves began chanting and pounding their axes against the stone floor, even as Elrond's eyes turned pitch black as he lifted his arms to the heavens in a clearly meaningful fashion, and even as the elves gathered around him began giggling, pointing, and calling him names Sam resolutely believed there was a solid explanation for the progressing situation. If not a readily available escape route that caused no harm to anyone.

Most certainly, there was a safe word. Sam was damn sure about that. He had clearly just forgotten what that safe word was. That was no problem though. He knew Rosie well enough that he was sure he would remember it in time. Encoded in that sentiment lay the true problem though. Sam's thoughts betrayed his true feelings.

 _In time? In time for what?_

Somewhere deep inside Sam realized that this was not the way things were meant to be.

There was no safe word. This wasn't going to end well.

He would be lying to himself if he said he didn't know what was going to happen next. And it was good of him to come to terms with this. As his Gaffer had once told him, if you can't be honest with yourself you can't be honest with anybody.

So in accepting the facts, Sam had won. He'd passed the test and he was glad for it. He let that happiness fill his entire being as the one thing he cared most about in all of Middle-Earth began slowly gnawing his limbs off.

When Sam woke up, he had intended to start cursing and screaming because he was far too postmodern to simply wake up in a cold sweat. That's what he'd intended but his brain was so foggy that he wasn't quite sure he remembered what the curses were.

Of course the curses were simply the curses. They were what they were. Sam was just a little bit shaky on how to pronounce them. After a brief pause he realized he ought to start shouting something or else the momentum of the action would vanish.

"Fark... fark?" He muttered meekly.

He was dead wrong. He knew he was dead wrong but he was hopelessly unable to verify the correct formation of his favorite foul words. Sam crawled over to a wide eyed Frodo to ascertain that he was asleep. Having confirmed he was completely alone, Sam stood up and spoke quietly to himself.

"Shick, SHICK. No, sheck... shet?" Not quite, but he was getting close.

In the cave lit only by the embers of the small fire an uneasy awkwardness set in. The awkwardness one doesn't experience when they are alone and listening to how they sound when they say _this,_ or observing how they look when they do _that._ One does not experience this of course because they are alone. But Sam felt it very acutely in this moment and it was fucking terrifying.

So partway into an incorrect articulation of "Holy fucking shit", Sam shut up. Whatever sentiments he'd previously held about being honest with himself were gone, He was fine losing this battle. The cave knew how he felt and that was enough.

It was time now to consider more important things like continuing to barely keep Frodo alive, finding some way to escape this dark hellhole they'd found themselves in, how to prepare for a slow death if they couldn't find a way out, and breakfast. Sam started with breakfast.

Sam carefully constructed a fire with the flickering remains of his previous achievement. He took some kindling from his sack. It was a combination of dried grass and twigs that he wrapped in some leaves to keep the moisture out. Real flammable shit. As expected it caught and burned like a motherfucker.

Sam grinned evilly as the flames danced in his eyes. This was actually one of the best things he'd ever done. All the young hobbits were consistently jealous of his firemaking skills. The secret was in the kindling. Gamgee had a knack for knowing what burned, how well, and for how long. On the verge of giggling, Sam reached into his pack for some ingredients. What he pulled out was cause for some degree of despair.

He still had a carrot, and carrots were alright by Sam. But he had this one carrot and nothing but this carrot. He had one carrot. That's all he had. He was beginning to realize that breakfast was nigh on out of the question for now.

In a moment of desperation Sam did some of his most radical deduction yet.

He began with basic assumptions but his logic progressively deteriorated as a desire for convenient coincidences outweighed his desire to retain his self image as an intelligent person. It went something like this:

"Frodo and I are lost. The only person who could possibly know where we are is Gollum. The only person who would be cruel enough to find us and opt to watch us suffer instead of help us is Gollum. Therefore Gollum is watching us right now." That was enough for Sam to begin desperately shouting for help.

"Gollum! Gollum you bitch, I know you're out there!" Receiving no initial response Sam's heart sank. The skank was playing games with him. He would have to grovel. That was clear as day.

"Smeagol?" Sam uttered quietly, "Smeagol... if you're out there I could really use your help."

Tears would help. Tears would definitely help. At least that's what he told himself after he started sobbing.

"Smeagol I'm sorry for calling you a bitch. I'm sorry for everything! Just please help us." As Sam fell to his knees and wept tears of agony, a cold raspy voice came from the darkness.

"Whose the fucking bitch now, Precious?"

When Smeagol lost Frodo's pipe while loading it with his super special secret ingredient, ostensibly poison, Frodo had gone ballistic. It was an unfortunate occurrence but not entirely Smeagol's fault.

Frodo was a heavy smoker and he was often very violent with his pipe. Smeagol had noticed that it was wearing over time but, not being a woodworker, there was nothing he could do to fix it. So one day when he had absconded with it he accidentally snapped it in half.

Smeagol had known despair in the past and compared to the time he lost his precious ring this was trivial. It was, however, still enough to elicit a defeated

"Fuck me, precious."

His options were severely limited at this point. He could try to fix the pipe himself, but after repeated attempts to mash the two pieces together he decided that wasn't gonna fucking work. He could enlist the help of the fat one to fix the pipe. That would, however, involve telling Sam about his drugging operation. Sam was too smart to believe anything Smeagol said in an attempt to cover this up. This wasn't saying much though because Smeagol couldn't have been more fucking transparent unless he'd constantly whispered in Sam's ear,

"I'm drugging Frodo."

That left one option. To just put the functional half of the pipe back into Frodo's sack and hope it he wouldn't notice it was damaged. In the state Frodo was in, it was likely that such a change would completely fail to register. That was the plan.

When Smeagol returned to their camp, however, his companions were gone and a broad Gamgee shaped trench led off into the forest. Where the trench ended, a trail of blood started and led straight into a small cave.

So after following the hobbits into the cave, Smeagol waited for the situation to cool down before moving in. He was certain that Frodo was dead set on killing him if he found him. So the aim was to wait until their psyches were damaged enough to willingly accept the help of a psycho like him. As it turned out he wasn't waiting more than two hours before Sam went fucking batshit.

First he woke up and started muttering random gibberish, then he turned around and started making a fire. He was laughing the whole time. Really laughing as though he was sincerely amused by his fire making skills. Then he grabbed a carrot out of his pack, looked at it for a solid thirty seconds and then dropped it. He curled into a ball and rocked back and forth for a little while and then he started shouting.

All things considered, Smeagol actually had no idea how Sam figured he was watching them. But it seemed as though the duo was in prime condition to accept the helping hand of just about anyone right now. So with that in mind, Smeagol saw it appropriate to throw Sam a bone.

This situation was dangerous. Sam was in a position to lose the sum total of his self worth. So rather than look this gift horse in the mouth Sam decided to just take this one in the gut. In response to Smeagol's inquiry Sam looked down and muttered,

"I'm the fucking bitch." If nothing else he was glad he finally remembered how to pronounce his curses.

"That's right." affirmed Smeagol.

The good news was that nobody was going to die in this cave. At the very least they would be able to better tend to Frodo's wounds and have more to eat than a single fucking carrot. Sure, until Frodo was back up to speed, Smeagol was the alpha, and Sam would have to deal with that. That was a small enough price to pay for their lives, Sam supposed.

"What does the fat one say, Precious?" goaded Smeagol. Sam grunted.

It didn't matter all that much what Smeagol thought of him. Besides, all he had to do as soon as Frodo was viable again was tell him about how the skank had been poisoning him. In the grand chess game the pundits would remember this move as the moment Sam won Frodo for good. With that in mind, Sam meekly replied,

"Thank you, Smeagol."


	5. Chapter 5

**Battlefield Medicine According to Sam**

If anyone was to be dubbed the victor in the whole cave ordeal, at least in the short term, most would probably agree that the advantage went to Gollum. It wasn't a complete blowout, after all the cave trip hadn't been entirely Sam's fault, but Gollum's actions certainly put him in a more commanding posture than Sam. That being said, the power he'd acquired meant very little at the moment because Sam had dirt on him.

Sam was fairly certain, and correctly so, that Gollum had been poisoning Frodo's pipe for the past few weeks and that knowledge alone was enough to halt any executive shit Gollum tried to pull. As a result of all this, they were stuck in a practical gridlock.

For the moment, however, the duo had paler, bonier fish to fry. The hopelessly runtish and clearly malnourished Oliphant in the room was none other than the hypothetical leader of the pack, Frodo Baggins. To be precise, the twice underlined action item for this moment in time was to keep the fucking crackwhore alive.

It took all of five minutes to haul Frodo out of the cave. Not only was the campsite laughably close to the mouth of the cave, the irony of which was entirely lost on Sam, but Frodo was really quite disturbingly lightweight by this point. It was no trouble at all for Sam to leisurely stroll about with Frodo slung over his shoulder but, in addition, he was quite certain he could have carried him in the crook of his arm with no significant effort required. Which was all well and good because by all accounts this was the easy part.

Gollum had been a veritable shut in for the past few hundred years and knew very little about tending to the wounded. However, in this case it wouldn't have been a stretch to assume that the knowledge gap between he and Sam concerning this subject was immaterial. Which is why after extracting Frodo from the cave it became necessary to hold a brief medical emergency conference on what should be done to treat their companion's ailments and, more broadly, how to treat ailments.

They propped his body up against a tree while they discussed their options. It was sincerely difficult for Sam to tell whether or not he was awake because he'd had the same wide eyed looked of woeful agony splayed across his face for the better part of the day. In any event it didn't seem like he could hear them. This somehow soothed Sam's sense of ethics out of some oddly formulated idea of how doctor patient confidentiality worked.

"If we may be so bold..." Began Gollum carefully, "Master looks pretty fucked up, precious." Sam could only nod solemnly in agreement.

This was saying a lot coming from the likes of Gollum, but his findings held up. Saying Frodo looked fucked up was about as useless as saying the land of Mordor was where the fucking shadows lay. A fucking Took could've told you that much. At the very least they had some common ground to work off of.

Frodo's problems were at least threefold. Firstly, he had probably suffered some significant organ damage and muscle atrophy after eating all the waybread and then not eating anything for the next month or so. Secondly, He had been drugged for several weeks afterwards and hadn't had a fix in almost a day. Lastly, he had very crudely and without instruction made seven semi-critical incisions in his left arm and as a result had lost a non-negligible amount of blood.

Truth be told Sam wasn't really quite sure whether or not Frodo was alive currently as he hadn't bothered checking his vitals in about an hour. All in all this was a bad time for Frodo with a horrendous pair of individuals for his life to be in the care of. This was lost on no one.

"Gollum, what exactly was it that you kept putting in his pipe?" Asked Sam quite responsibly. Gollum grunted in defeat and told him all he knew.

"We honestly have no fucking idea, precious."

In a way this was almost a relief for Sam. Even if Gollum knew exactly what he'd been poisoning Frodo with, Sam wouldn't have had the slightest idea of how to deal with it. At least this way he didn't have to pretend he knew anything. That aside it seemed prudent to Sam to perhaps look into mending Frodo's arm first. After all this whole drug problem was an injury of the mind and Sam was certainly no psychiatrist. Logic dictated that he prioritize the injuries of the flesh.

The arm was fucking toast. Sam was dead sure that there was nothing he could even begin to do for this thing. With the makeshift bandage removed he could see a myriad of colors that ought not be there decorating the skin surrounding the wounds. The whole arm was so engorged it was almost as big as Sam's own. Blood and pus were still oozing out of each one of the incisions.

"Oh fuck." Declared Sam. "This ain't natural. This is some black magic shit." Sam stepped back a few paces.

"Do we... Cuts it off or..." Gollum mused. "Perhaps the fat one does it, precious?"

"No wait. Hold on." Sam sat down and clutched his head.

Seeing Frodo like this had just reminded him of something. He'd seen this before. After weathertop when Frodo sustained a morgul blade to the shoulder, Strider had done something to help. That's right, he'd turned to Sam and said something like

 _"Hey you, fatty. Go get some fucking Kingsfoil"_ At least that's how Sam recalled it.

There were some other details that Sam was a little foggy on and this was just about the extent of his remedial knowledge but damn it he was going to run with it.

"Kingsfoil! We need fucking kingsfoil!" He shouted.

Gollum wasn't familiar with Kingsfoil, but fortunately enough the plant was fairly abundant in this region of Gondor.

After acquiring the scent of the first leaf Sam plucked, Gollum got on all fours and combed the surroundings in a frighteningly efficacious manner. Saying his behavior was like that of a dog would betray an immensely lopsided favoritism towards dogs. He was so much fucking better at this than any prize winning mutt Sam had ever seen. Within minutes Gollum had collected more athelas than that amatuer Strider would have any idea what to do with. They had raw material now. This was progress.

The duo observed their pile of Kingsfoil with part admiration and part ambivalence. Yeah, they had the shit they needed. The question now was how to apply it correctly.

"What do we fucking do now fatty? Perhaps the fat one does not even begin to think this through, Precious." Sam regarded Gollum's thesis with a confident yet casual dismissal in the form of his resolute middle finger.

"I'll not be 'aving none of your shit, skank!" He asserted as he reached into his pack. "I'll not be 'aving it!"

Gollum rubbed his bald, decrepit head thoughtfully as he mused,

"So he does know what's he's doing, Precious?"

Sam chuckled as he lied in every possible sense of the word. "Oh, Gollum. I know _exactly_ what I'm doing. I always do." He had no idea what he was doing. He never did.

This time he was just going to attempt to look as though he did. Although this tactic tended to result in the confirmation of the fact that he was a fraud, this time he was pretty sure he could scrape by on looks alone.

He figured it would look really cool if he ground up the leaves in a bowl until it was a paste. That was step one. There currently was no step two but Sam was getting there and he didn't like being rushed.

So he grabbed a bowl and spoon from his pack, as well as his water skein, and gathered a few leaves in his hand. With a haughty glance in Gollum's direction Sam placed the leaves in the bowl, poured in some water, and began awkwardly mashing the mixture with his spoon. After about two minutes of uninterrupted effort it became clear that mixing things did in fact work. A paste was beginning to form and a somewhat pleasant aroma wafted from the bowl.

"Shit." Uttered Gollum, clearly impressed.

Sam very well understood that this momentary admiration from Gollum would pass as soon as he got to the nonexistent step two. But for now he was sincerely content with the fact that he commanded any respect whatsoever.

So, relishing in the moment, he softly murmured, "Fuckin' A." as he toiled at his craft.

Then Frodo started crying.

Frodo's outcry had multiple implications and in turn carried opposing connotations. For starters Frodo was still alive, something which had not been deemed important enough to confirm up until this point. Secondly he was currently in pain, which was hardly surprising but it did apply a certain degree of urgency to the next steps Sam needed to take.

On one hand these things meant that there was still hope to preserve Frodo's body, This was cause for celebration, or at the very least it should have served to galvanize Sam's response. That being said, Frodo's continued existence imparted a somewhat unwelcome sense of duty on Sam's conscience. Lifting his gaze to observe Frodo's agony, he regarded his friend as a particularly prickly and well rooted weed he'd forgotten to pull.

"Well, shit." Grunted Sam as he stood up.

As he trudged over to his whimpering friend, he cursed himself for being so melodramatic as to assume there was no step two. Of course there was a step fucking two. Just spread the shit on the wound. The Tooks must have been in fucking stitches at his incompetence. But now was not the time for hindsight. Now what was needed was cold precise focus on the task at hand. So he spread that shit all over Frodo's arm.

Given that there was no visual change to the wound whatsoever, there was no real way to confirm whether or not this was helping at all. Of course it would have been slightly unreasonable for Sam to expect anything to happen but he was kind of hoping for some sort of affirmation in the form of a magical fucking aura or something. Sam could see right away however that he was woefully under supplied for the task as he ran out of paste almost immediately.

"Gollum, bring the fucking kingsfoil over here."

Gollum, who had been uninvolved thus far hesitantly obliged as he carefully considered how he was going to translocate the considerable mound of leaves to a more readily accessible location.

Succinctly settling to strategically shuttle the samples in several small shipments, Smeagol started to speedily shift the sorting of the shit to Sam's side in a savage scramble. But as far as Sam could see, Gollum was just desperately tossing leaves in his face.

Frodo started shrieking in a way that might have accidentally been confused as a fell beast mating call. This slightly worried Sam. The last thing he wanted was a sexually frustrated servant of the dark lord descending upon them only to find a few tasty looking morsels and the one ring to boot. However he was mostly concerned about this because it gave him a twisted sort of satisfaction to feel so considerate.

In any event, it was no longer the time or place to be so precise in his methods, and so his paste production process proceeded in a highly efficient yet incredibly sloppy fashion. Even so, he wasn't moving nearly fast enough.

He decided that for now he was going to ignore the fact that Frodo's tears seemed to have a vividly red tinge to them, and in exchange he would have to consider the issue of the copious amounts of blood leeching from his mouth.

"Fuck the paste." Said Sam as he chucked his bowl aside.

The raw leaves would have to do, he decided as he scooped an aliquot off the ground and smashed it onto Frodo's arm. After soaking the wounds in a torrent of water from his bottle, he wrapped up the arm, leaves and all, in a stretch of fabric from his pack.

Moving on to the pressing matter of what seemed to be internal hemorrhaging, Sam was at an utter loss as to what to do. He was well beyond his range of expertise in this field. With that in mind it was crystal clear to Sam that it was deduction time.

Sam decided to spare himself the brass tacks on this session and just focus on what he would invariably decide upon. This entailed warming water over a fire, dumping a bunch of fucking leaves in the pot and forcing the shit down Frodo's throat. It was like tea. Kingsfoil tea. That seemed fairly harmless and, more importantly, incredibly easy. So quickly making a fire, something he was refreshingly comfortable with, he set a pot of water boiling and began brewing leaves.

As Sam and Gollum waited they couldn't help but notice that the vapor coming off the pot smelled really fucking good. It was slightly euphoric in fact. Sam was beginning to get a bit light headed when he finally decided to remove the pot from the flames. This was certainly something that would have to be investigated later, but for now it was time to get Frodo to drink it.

First he cut the mixture with some cold water to avoid scalding Frodo's throat. He may have been dense but he wasn't a fucking Took.

As he positioned himself to administer his homemade medicine, makeshift funnel in his left hand, Gollum cleared his throat to address some concerns he had.

"So... the fat one knows what he's doing?" Speaking from a place of sincere ignorance, he phrased his words very carefully. "This... does fucking work, Precious?"

Sam's face remained motionless as he considered Gollum's inquiry. This wasn't the time for honesty. Because in all honesty Sam was making this shit up as he went along. It wasn't his job to be transparent in his methods or to make everyone feel included in a joint effort to achieve homeostasis. His duty right now was to convey strength and confidence in his ideas. This needed to be without a doubt the way to go about this. Scenarios in which Sam wasn't on top of this needed to be negligible, and thus not mentioned.

You don't tell the kids that there is a possibility that the barrow wights could break into the hobbit hole and just fucking lay waste to them. That hobbit hole is an impregnable fortress guarded by the biggest baddest motherfucking sentinel of a hobbit whose mere existence makes all the barrow wights cower in terror. You say that because there's no fucking way that a child could sleep with the knowledge that the world has no safeguards against lawless savages. If it was peace of mind that poor Smeagol needed, then at no cost to Sam that's what he would get. If things didn't work out he would have to explain that the tides of fate are cruel and that there was nothing to be done about it to begin with.

Sam didn't break eye contact as he casually jammed the funnel down Frodo's maw and started haphazardly pouring the tea. Then with an even keeled tone and a warm smile Sam stated firmly,

"I really fucking hope so."


	6. Chapter 6

**Do No Harm**

Of particular importance to Sam was his dear old Gaffer. One whom he had always aspired to be more like in every way. Also a seemingly endless chasm of useful knowledge which Sam had made fairly frequent use of in his youth. There was a certain lesson he'd been given once which, had the simpleton had half the wits to remember, may have been somewhat handy under the Hobbit's current circumstances.

It was a very hot Summer afternoon in the Shire and Frodo and Sam had both been incredibly busy frolicking and laughing in the fields, as they often were. As of yet, this activity had yielded no significant progress towards anything truly meaningful, but the day was young and these two Hobbits were prepared to wait indefinitely for something tangible to emerge.

It was around that time that Sam's father, the esteemed Hamfast Gamgee, appeared before them with a somewhat worried expression on his face.

"The two of you've been out here nigh on four hours! What in the blazes are ye hopin' to accomplish?"

Sam, not entirely sure himself, nervously looked at Frodo, ready to defer to whatever he said.

"Ah, no matter." The Gaffer continued, "Have you two been staying hydrated?"

Upon seeing the youngsters' blank expressions, he inaudibly muttered "Fucking hell" under his ale laced breath.

What followed was, frankly, a rather half assed explanation of the importance of staying hydrated while playing outside on hot days like this. Presentation inadequacies be damned, Frodo and Sam were utterly entranced by every word the Gaffer uttered. Concepts such as heat exhaustion were frightening and new but piqued their naïve curiosities nontheless.

Satisfied with himself, Hamstaff started hobbling back home to get another pint of ale. Suddenly he stopped and scratched his head before turning and saying

"Oh, if one of ye were to pass out... ye know 'cause of the heat... don't ever try to force water down their gullet. You shouldn't ever try to force an unconscious person to drink water."

Often times, people do things that they probably should have known weren't good ideas. Usually, these problems are alleviated by the herd immunity arising from friends and family calling foul upon one's bullshit. Generally speaking, a fuck ton of bases get covered when you surround yourself with people who aren't entirely retarded.

This, however, can create a false sense of security when it comes to doing things which are in a gray area, ethically or otherwise. Common reasoning might suggest that

'if this thing I'm about to do is so stupid, then I would have been told by now that it's a stupid thing to do'.

Common reasoning would thus betray you, as common reasoning is clearly not functioning in the interest of self preservation at this point. In addition, people who reason this way are likely also the type of people who have already been warned about this behavior and have simply ignored or forgotten these nuggets of wisdom.

It wasn't Sam who realized there was a problem initially. It was actually Smeagol who spoke up first after his companion had already funneled at least half a pint of Athelas tea down a half conscious Frodo's throat.

"What if that's getting in his lungs, precious?" Smeagol asked meekly.

Sam's knee jerk reaction to the inquiry was one of fight or flight, which manifested quite bombastically as a momentary pause in the pouring of the liquid. For starters, Sam didn't really have any idea what Smeagol's suggestion even meant. He reacted so strongly because the phrasing made whatever it was sound really fucking catastrophic. Some of the most frightening things in the world to Sam were 'what if's' that he didn't have the prerequisites to evaluate.

But after thinking about it for a moment, he managed to roughly piece together the main thrust of Smeagol's question. Was Frodo drowning? Clearly not, thought Sam. While it would be a disservice to Sam's intelligence to suggest that he held to this axiom simply because Frodo was not currently submerged in water, the more nuanced reasoning behind his conclusion was less convincing and offered negligible support for his thesis.

More important to Sam was the fact that he had let his guard down for a moment. He had betrayed his lack of resolve in his plan and now he would face severe reprimands if he didn't play it cool right quick.

So, instead of continuing to pour the tea down the funnel jammed in his friend's mouth, he did a little hover, as though contemplating dumping more, and then smoothly lowered the vessel before starting to say

"That oughta be enough".

Before he could finish speaking, however, a gurgling, gagging sound arose from Frodo's throat as the tea began dribbling out of his forcibly agape mouth.

In this particular case, Sam was in no real position to make this look any better than it did. That's not to say he didn't give it his Gamgee best, but what resulted was arguably the absolute apex of absurdity of Sam's entire life.

"I think it's working!" Sam exclaimed loudly as he violently grasped Frodo by his shoulders. "Fuckin' ell, I must be a genius!"

Smeagol looked on in abject despair and wept, hypothetically. He had every reason to weep, given the situation, but was critically hampered by the fact that Gollum tended to rein in shit like that but also by a total lack of functioning tear ducts.

Still, inside he wept for Frodo, because he was probably gonna fucking die. The expunged liquid sprinkling the forest floor mirrored the phantom tears that theoretically streamed down his face. But he wept mostly for Sam, who was currently vying for his intelligence by shaking his drowning friend around like a ragdoll while lauding himself for devising such a scenario.

Sam, himself, was more than a fair bit concerned about Frodo's most recent complication, but for some reason his desire to not look stupid in front of Smeagol slightly edged out over his desire to preserve his friend's life.

To his credit, it only took him about fifteen seconds to realize that this was one of those times where trying to please everyone usually results in pleasing no one.

As it happened, Frodo's vitals were plummeting at nearly the same rate as Smeagol's already dismal opinion of him as a living entity. Sam couldn't see the trendlines, but it was plainly evident that he was in the midst of a uniquely masterful fuck up. So in a moment of unusual strength, Sam stopped what he was doing. Frodo continued to choke as Sam glanced at Gollum and said,

"Well, I guess we should try and..." while carefully laying his patient on the ground.

It was certainly not a triumphant display of resuscitation prowess on anyone's part. It was actually one of the ugliest fucking things to happen in the region since some mild skirmish during the second age. Though Sam and Smeagol worked together to rescue their friend, the whole seemed to be significantly less than the sum of its parts in this instance.

And yet, despite pitfalls both mechanical and mental, the duo managed to excrete whatever liquid had caused an interruption in Frodo's ragged and wailing, but marginally consistent breathing pattern. Upon hearing the soothing rhythm of his desperate inhalations, the two breathed almost pointedly relieved sighs.

"I s'pose we oughta see if e's alive." Sam postulated. Smeagol nodded in solemn agreement. They then proceeded to perform an atrociously uninformed vitals check.

The last several minutes had forced the two to forge some sort of bond. It was strictly for practical purposes of course, but the way they now spoke so freely of their unfathomable ignorance about the human body was almost beautiful.

"What's the uh... fuck- you know like the heartbeat?" Sam began as he glanced at his partner for affirmation at every step.

Smeagol nodded firmly. He knew about heartbeats. Encouraged, Sam continued,

"We should... I mean we oughta check that I reckon." Smeagol nodded again.

"That makes sense, precious. The fat one is... that's a good idea anyways..."

A somewhat troubled look came across his already twisted face as he mused aloud,

"How do we checks it?"

Sam had been preparing for that question but he wasn't nearly ready to answer it.

"Well I was just thinking, you know, there's that- It's like the little heartbeat. You know? It's sort of, err... all over? Or rather it's sort of- you know what I'm saying" Sam had run out of rope a long time ago and was attempting to weave some more as he spoke. Tragically, he had naught the faculties required for weaving anything.

Despite the overwhelming ambiguity of Sam's inquiry, peer pressure seemed to coerce Smeagol into loosely coraborrating his theory.

"Yeeeeeaaaasss?" he half bullshitted, squinting hopefully at Sam.

They continued to blindly fumble through refining their theories surrounding basic bodily functions. In the end, they managed to ascertain that Frodo's pulse in fact existed. It's inconsistency may have scared a doctor shitless but luckily nobody present had that kind of unnecessary distinction. They also noted that his eyes were wide open, which more likely than not meant he was asleep. Unable to determine anything else, the two decided his condition was probably stable.

Despite its terrifying nature, the cave Frodo had found earlier made a decent shelter. When the storm clouds rolled in, the able-bodied members of the troop relocated all assets to the relative safety of the gaping chasm of certain fucking doom. Sam propped Frodo up against the cave wall and quickly got a fire going while Smeagol went hunting for meat of some sort.

The plan for now, ostensibly, was to hold tight for a bit while Frodo's wounds healed. Sam supposed he would have to redress the wounds every few hours or so and also have some of that tea at the ready at all times.

That delightfully aromatic tea.

There was something very interesting about the way the brewed athelas leaves smelled and now that Sam was alone, he wanted to test something out. After grabbing his pipe from his pack, he proceeded to jam some kingsfoil leaves into the bowl.

He paused for a moment. In some abstract sense, there was no fucking reason for this to work. They had already leveraged this plant well past any justifiable level in that they were actively counting on it working effectively as a coagulant, an anti inflammatory, a decontaminant, and a painkiller. Now, here Sam sat with the nerve to imagine that it might also work as a psychedelic for some reason.

Before he could work up the courage to light his pipe, Gollum returned with three coneys in hand. Sam couldn't quite explain to himself later why he'd hurriedly hid his pipe back in his pack at the sight of the skitzo bitch's return, but he knew that a precedent had been set. This kingsfoil smoking business was his dirty little secret. Nobody but Sam was getting in on the ground floor for this one. If it was a flub then nobody got hurt. If it was a roaring success then all the better for Sam. He grinned at the thought.

For some reason acts of pure selfishness were the next big thing for Sam. Maybe in some way he felt that Frodo needed some sort of directly related comeuppance for his lembas stunt and the only way he could think to enact that was to invent a resource and deny him the opportunity to harvest it. Maybe that's precisely how he felt.

"Why does the fat one smile, precious?" Smeagol interrupted his chain of thought.

Sam wiped the grin of his face and retorted, "None of your business, skank." grabbing two of the coneys as he spoke.

Smeagol indignantly muttered to himself as he tore into his raw rabbit. Sam set about boiling some water over his nominally performing fire and began cooking the meat. He reached back into his pack and retrieved a single carrot.

As he stared at it, wishing it would morph into some thyme or a couple bay leaves, the rain began to fall. Sheltered from the storm in his cave of abyssal demons, Sam sighed heartily and took a large bite out of his last vegetable.


End file.
